Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 25-year-old woman comes for a preconception evaluation. She has a history of hypertension that is well controlled with lisinopril. Medical history is otherwise unremarkable.
On physical examination, blood pressure is 134/86 mm Hg in both upper extremities; other vital signs are normal. Results of the cardiovascular examination are unremarkable. There is no ...

The life cycle of a medical advance usually goes something like this: from discovery at the research bench and replication of findings to translational research and clinical trials, to implementation. The bottleneck can be at any one of these stages, and often it is in the discovery one; we just haven’t yet found the thing that works.
But other times, we have -- the intervention works, we have shown and confirmed ...

When I was in nursing school there was always a lot of eye-rolling when it came time to discuss nursing diagnoses. This was mostly because nursing diagnoses were followed by book-length nursing care plans that we had to produce for various imaginary patients. There was also a faction, including myself, who thought a medical diagnosis was just fine, thank you, no need to reinvent the proverbial wheel.
For example, for a ...

The Lumberjack World Championships, coming up for those interested in Hayward, Wisconsin in late July 2015, appear to be very impressive. Contestants are judged on a diverse array of aptitudes, from chopping and sawing to pole climbing and log rolling. One presumes the criteria for winning each of these are clear and as objective as possible. There is a panel of master lumberjacks to help oversee the judging.
In short, as a ...

No pain no gain.
Pain is weakness leaving your body.
What’s your excuse?
Have you seen these? The ubiquitous fitness themed motivational memes foisted upon us by corporations and Internet bloggers alike. You know what these all have in common? Aside from the fact that they typically aren’t associated with the funny cat videos that comprise roughly 94 percent of Internet traffic, they all do one thing: They make you feel more inadequate ...

NPR recently reported, “Measles makes an unwelcome visit to Disneyland.” Nine people who visited Disneyland theme parks in California over winter break had caught measles, almost all of them unvaccinated children. The next day, ABC reported that the number of cases has grown to 19. Of these, only two had been fully vaccinated. Some of the cases were too young to receive vaccines, others apparently chose not to get ...

Influenza has arrived refusing to be ignored or be the ugly step-virus to Ebola any longer. This influenza season is officially an epidemic. The Washington Post's Wonkblog reported earlier this month that December 2014 was “one of the worst flu months in years.” In fact, they found that it was “the worst December since the polling organization started tracking flu season in 2008.”
As of January 3rd, the CDC reported widespread ...

I am a recovering addict.
My compulsion started when I was 10-years-old. I remember thinking about when I would get my next fix. These feelings got in the way of my ability to perform scholastically and socially. I yearned not for marijuana, cocaine or heroin, but for something with much easier access and profound availability.
My drug was food. By the time I was ...

Ear infections (or, what we like to call “acute otitis media”) are one of the staple diagnoses of pediatrics. Most kids have at least one before their third birthday. And most pediatricians see at least one every day by 11. You would think we would always get it right. But I have a confession -- we don’t. In fact, children are misdiagnosed and over-treated at an alarming rate.
There are several reasons for ...